


Falling

by postcardsfromrussia



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Eating Disorders, Gen, M/M, Stars
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-01
Updated: 2014-02-01
Packaged: 2018-01-10 18:28:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1163052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/postcardsfromrussia/pseuds/postcardsfromrussia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas is fifteen years old, and he doesn't know how to eat. Dean is seventeen and doing the same thing. When they meet each other in the hospital, will they convince each other that they're worth everything?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling

**Author's Note:**

> This has a super big TRIGGER WARNING for anyone with food/body image issues!
> 
> Also this is one of like, MANY chapters. Plot will totally pick up :))

> **
> 
> a.
> 
> **

_i._

Cas is fifteen years old when he stops eating. It’s not so much a conscious act as it is one of mostly negligence. He doesn’t really think about it very much until someone points it out to him. Afterwards, he thinks that it’s romantic. It’s a good way of pointing out how very human he is. He is Castiel, and he is alive.

 

_ii._

 

What it takes Cas a while to realize – years, really – is that there is nothing romantic about lying on your bedroom floor wrapped in a blanket crying your heart out because everything is breaking (which is what happens when things get too thin. they break.) There isn’t really anything beautiful about puking down the shower drain because that’s the only place no one is listening. Then realizing that you’re pretty sure the acidity is not just seeping through the plaster of your house but also seeping through your brain, out through your mouth, making you a toxic person and everyone else around you poisoned. Unless they get out quick enough, which everyone does. They’re way too soon to depart.

Even farther along the roads, he thinks about not sleeping for days because you can’t stop thinking even though you’re thinking about nothing and when you go to write it down it comes out as nothing. nothing nothing nothing. About how this is not what he meant by being thin, this is not what he meant by throwing up, this is not what he meant by being nothing. But it’s what he seems to have ended up with.

Later- when he and Dean are both in the hospital – someone points out to him that eating disorders are things that girls do. Cas doesn’t much feel like pointing out that he does a lot of things that are typically assigned to girls – from not eating, to fucking boys.

These are the things that he learns.

 

_iii._

“Hold up, Cas,” says Anna, who has dropped her school binder on the floor and has knelt down to pick it up, the papers and grades splaying everywhere. Cas bends down to help her. Hands her some of the things. When he moves to stand up, he buckles; his body is suddenly too light for his head and for a second everything turns black.

This is not the first time that this has happened. Cas knows the feeling well, which is why he knows, by now, how to handle it. He remembers trying to step out of the shower a few weeks ago and slipping on the tile and waking up twenty minutes later. He knows how to handle it. He knows a lot of things. But for the life of him he can’t seem to make the connection on why this is happening.

He doesn’t say anything to Anna, because there’s not really anything to say that involves the truth. She’s always been good at seeing things, though. Better than Cas is.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yes,” says Cas. “Just a little lightheaded.”

Anna accepts it, doesn’t wonder why. Why would she? Cas is a good student, he stays out of trouble. His friends are the same way. Castiel Novak is not the kind of boy to do bad things.

Go figure.

 

_iv._

 

Castiel has always been fond of stars. He has a telescope and a skylight in his room, but what he’s always been more interested in is the philosophy of them. He likes stars mostly because he likes what they have come to represent to him: even when you can see them, they’re never really here- it’s just a memory of what they used to be. You’re wishing on something from the past; you can’t seem to let it go. Can’t seem to stop looking for it and at it, everywhere. It seems a lot like life, to him.

Cas also likes the words that come with stars. They make him feel like he is so much larger than life – that he has a purpose here, that the sun and the moon and the stars all came together and burst to make a world in which he could be created. 

He loves the word astriferous, which means: bearing or containing of the stars. When he is feeling especially philosophical he likes to remember that all of humanity is astriferous. They all come from stardust and water, but they still bury their fingernails into the earth, because some of them never were meant to be celestial. It takes billions of years for a star to grow old enough to burn; the larger the star, the more time you have. Cas figures that his stars are infinitesimally tiny. He likes it that way.

 

> **
> 
> b.
> 
> **

 

_i._

Dean is seventeen when he stops eating. This is on purpose. The way his father’s been treating him lately – he’s so much, too much to deal with right then. Dad only needed to worry about Sam. So Dean made a deal with himself that he needed to disappear. His conversations with his dad, they start with I love you. we’re family. and end with an apology. Every time.

 

_ii._

 

1\. depression is not exclusive. neither is anxiety. you can feel everything and nothing all at the same time and never be able to tell which one you hate more.  
2\. eating disorders do not just destroy yourself but they also destroy everyone around you, which means that it’s just a race to get out while you still can. you’ll be all alone. you’ll want to eat pie and cry and watch sappy movies but you can’t because you can’t eat pie. no one thinks about those things.  
3\. your mouth always tastes like pennies and tears.  
4\. you want to write these things down because you feel everything. then you’ll go and sit down and remember that you don’t have any words left.  
5\. the only things i can manage to write right now are lists because if nothing else i’ve always been obsessed with getting things in the perfect order.  
6\. your life doesn’t decay slowly. in the course of twenty-four hours you can lose everything you ever cared about. it’s funny because you’ll lose everything for the same reason. mine was that i was too much to deal with, which is funny because i’ve spent years of my life fighting to be too little to deal with.  
7\. you won’t be able to cry for too long because it hurts and you’ll get lightheaded.

Dean throws the pen down in a clash of anger. All he knows how to do right now are lists. onetwothreefourfiveonetwothreefourfive. 

There’s not a lot that he hates more right now than himself. It’s always been that way, he doesn’t really have a lot besides it. Hatred and hunger are two things that he knows how to hold on to. But lately, even those things are slipping away. That’s why he’s writing them down.

 

_iv._

 

He took a long shower and cried, which is not the thing that Men Like Him do. Not the men that his father admires, at least. Dean thinks for a second, just for one second, about telling his dad that he thinks he likes boys too and that he hasn’t been eating. Then he thought about telling Sam and his skin went red and all he could whisper, hysterically, was how sorry he was. Poor Sam.

There are some things Dean Winchester does not understand like why sometimes he has dreams where he can fly, but can never go too high in the air. Like if he ends up too high, all that’ll happen is he’ll come crashing down to the ground. 

Sometimes, he forgets the difference between dreams and reality.

 

_v._

 

Dean hasn’t been religious since the day his mother died and he had to carry his brother out while the house went up in flames but sometimes he still prays at night. He’s not completely sure what he’s praying to – an angel? the stars? maybe both. He’ll take what he can get, at this point.

He’s never been good at holding onto things which is what happens when he can’t stay in the same home for more than two years because his father doesn’t want to settle down he just wants to keep moving, keep hunting, keep going. He knows how to hold onto this, though. That’s the thing.

 

_vi._

 

“Home,” his father says when he slams the front door, throws the leather jacket down on the table (Dean can hear it from all the way upstairs because there’s money and credit cards and weapons all inside of it.) Nothing else. Just the simple explanation, for Dean, at least. Home.

It’s not a greeting, not anymore – it’s a warning.

 

_vii._

 

Again he’s thinking about telling Sammy. Little Sammy. Sammy who came home one day after school nearly in tears because someone said something mean to him, and the next day kicked the boy’s ass into next Thursday. Dean had been so damn proud, that day. 

For seventeen years Dean has been watching over his little brother: what does he do now, when he needs someone to watch over him?


End file.
